Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

It’S Not All Zeroes And Ones: Constructing Online Identity Assembly Theory, Adam W. Tyma, Lynette G. Leonard

Communication Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The construction of online identity, though examined in other disciplines, has not yet been approached theoretically in the communication scholarship. Online identities cannot be understood as linear or static as some identity theory presents. Online identities need to be understood as continually changing representations, never fixed in one position, and perpetually in a state of assembly. Identity research within the communication literature has focused on specific characteristics of the medium (e.g., anonymity) and the effects of those characteristics on the outcomes of the communicative act rather than focusing on the communicative process of identity construction itself. In other words, past …